Within articles, this template is meant to be placed at the top of the article's See also section. If there is no See also section, you can put it in the External links section instead; there is no need to create a new section just to house this template. If there is no External links section either, just put it below the article text in the place that seems most appropriate.

There are no particular rules about the placement of portals on other kinds of pages.

The portal image names are stored in subpages of Module:Portal/images, organised by the first letter of the portal name. For example, the first letter of Portal:Fishing is "F", so the image name is stored at Module:Portal/images/f. If there is an entry for a portal on the correct page then the corresponding image will be shown next to the portal link. If no image is found then File:Portal-puzzle.svg will be shown instead.

It is also possible to specify aliases for portal images. For example, the code {{Portal|Detroit}} produces the same image as the code {{Portal|Metro Detroit}}. The "Detroit" alias is found on the page Module:Portal/images/aliases.

The image-detection algorithm is case-insensitive. For example, the code {{Portal|Detroit}} will produce the same image as the code {{Portal|detroit}} (although the portal links will be different). Portal names are stored in lower case in the image subpages, and input is converted to lower case before being checked.

To add new images to the list, please make a protected edit request at Template talk:Portal to get an administrator to edit the correct subpage for you. Portal images must be either in the public domain or available under a free license that allows commercial reuse and derivative works; fair-use images are not acceptable. The template {{Portal icon demonstration}} may be of use when deciding whether an image is suitable for use as a portal icon; it formats an image using the same size and style that the {{Portal}} template uses by default.

{{Random portal component with nominate}} - used on the portal main page to randomly display articles from the portal sub-pages, adding the option to nominate other Featured foo articles.

{{Random subpage}} - used on the portal main page to randomly display articles from the portal sub-pages. This template is best used for creating randomly populated Did you know... sections on the portal main page that are intended to include multiple Did you know... facts.